Teaching a new lesson
P.E.I. group hopes project helps to keep Kenyan girls in school
Cornwall’s Gaylene Smith will be packing the gift of education when she travels to East Africa next month.
Smith is co-ordinating a project to provide hundreds of school girls in Mikinduri, a poor rural area in Kenya, with washable and reusable feminine hygiene kits. Women across P.E.I. have been spending many hours – 240 or so collectively – preparing kits that each include an instruction sheet, two sanitary pads, eight washable liners, soap and two pairs of panties.
The purpose of the kits, which come in attractive, colourful, cloth bags, is to enable female students to remain in school.
Each kit is expected to last a student three years.
When girls reach puberty in Mikinduri, they consistently miss up to five or six days a month because they cannot afford feminine pads or tampons.
“I really think education is the key to a better life for them,’’ says Smith.
“I’m excited to be taking (kits) over and talking to the girls.’’
Smith will teach the girls about feminine hygiene and female anatomy.
A goal of raising $20,000 to fund the project has been met with $12,500 coming from a concert held in Charlottetown Nov. 17 featuring Lennie Gallant and several special musical guests.
“It was a great event,’’ says Ted Grant, founder and president of Mikinduri Children of Hope, an Island-based charity established to help relieve poverty and sickness and help raise the standard of living in the Mikinduri area.
Smith is heading a small team to Africa Feb. 1 on behalf of the group, carting along 400 kits for female students.
Plenty more will be prepared in the coming months.
Grant says there is enough money – and desire – to prepare an additional 600 kits that will make their way to Mikinduri in the summer.
Anyone interested in helping to prepare the kits – sewing is a valuable asset – can contact Smith at 902-566-1072 or Evelyn McQuaid at 902-569-4283.
Mikinduri Children of Hope has raised more than $1 million since forming in 2003, funding numerous education, healthcare and agriculture programs as well as other special projects.
Smith will visit the group’s project sites during her trip to assess water projects, classroom construction, scholarship programs, and feeding programs in seven schools.
She will also explore potential new projects for a desperate area in Western Kenya that has many orphans as a result of a very high prevalence of HIV.